Ok...well, I'm 33, smoked since I was about 18. I have cut down and at this point down to about 10 a day, from a pack or so...

For the past 3 years, I've tried the patch (makes me sick, even the 7mg) wellbuterin, gum, losenges....you name it, I've tried it.

We don't have quit smoking support groups where I live.....My husband quit 9 years ago (we've been married 11), I don't smoke in the house, and not much during the day due to my career....but I just can't get over it.....I can't quit and am feeling like I'm going to die because I do smoke...

HOW DO I STOP.....I'm struggling terribly.....I've got 2 great kids, I don't smoke around people who don't smoke, and am very embarrassed if someone who doesn't know I do (I hide it well) finds out I do.

I'm going over night with my DH and a friend and his wife Friday, no one smokes but me, and it's causing me GREAT stress.....

you have to really want to quit. i have tried over the last 10 years. i even stopped for 6 weeks and then went back to smoking while using the patch. i did that for 3 years. in january of this year i did hynosis along with the patch. i didn't smoke for almost 5 months. i was using the lowest patch with only a week or so left to go on it when severe anxiety hit. i went back to smoking for 2 months and now have been smoke free for another 3 months. think of the positives of not smoking. for me it was being free of the cravings. i love not having to have a cigarette. yes the cravings are hard in the beginning, but they do go away if you get busy and they get less and less over time. i also like not having to have to go out in the cold to have a cigarette. i like feeling like a winner instead of a loser who craves some dried up leaves and paper. i also refer to myself as a non smoker. i don't say i quit smoking. i say i no longer smoke. hope some of this helps.

I agree with the other posters that you have to really *want* to quit. Sounds hokey, but it's true. I know you think you want to. And sometimes it takes a while to go from just thinking you want to quit, to TRULY wanting to quit. You have to be ready. I half-heartedly wanted to quit for a long time. On one hand, I loved smoking. On the other hand, I hated it. I started off by reading lots of "I Quit" stories about others who overcame the addiction. I would say that 90% of quitting is MENTAL.

I am just taking it day by day. One day I just decided to not smoke. It's now been over a week. I think about smoking every day.....but you get stronger with each day. "I got through yesterday, I can get through today." Now the thought of "messing it up" is stronger than the want for a cigarette.

Some people do it cold turkey. Others cut down little by little. You have already cut down to 10 a day - that alone is an accomplishment. You DO have the power. Maybe cut down to 9...then 8....and so on. Talk to your husband about his quit....how did he do it? He can help you...he can be your support group. Have you thought about acupuncture? I know people that have had great success with it. And it won't make you sick like the patches or that nasty gum.

Think about all the reasons you want to quit. Obviously, the health reasons, but you also mentioned the embarassment of having people find out that don't know you smoke. Do you want to hide forever? Think about the freedom you'll have - being able to go away on a trip without "worry". Think about the $ you'll save. Think about this question: if you don't quit now or soon, when will you quit? A year from now? Five years from now? Wouldn't you rather get this over with sooner rather than later so that five years from now you are happier and healthier and free from cigarettes?

It's tremendous that you have cut down to only 10 a day!! I think you may have come up with your own solution, keeping busy! Is there a hobby you have thought about starting? maybe your attic/garage/spare room needs reorganizing? Dive into those things, keep yourself busy, and hopefully, after a while, you will have lost your taste for a cig. 10 a day isn't much, but at over $3 a pack, still adds up, save the money for something, anything else if that is what might motivate you too.

I laid down the cigarettes for 70 days and then had a very stressful day and what did I do but picked up a cigarette and smoked it and kept on smoking. I regretted it right after I lit it but I thought to my self it was too late but that was just me making up excuses for smoking. Well I laid the cigarettes down again and it's only been a day but hey thats a day with out one. I am proud of my self already. I am in bad health already because of smoking and the wheezing and all the crap that goes with it ain't worth it too me. I lost my Mom on March 28, 2006 to COPD and thats why I want to stop. I do not want to go through what I sit back and seen her go through. It was horible to see her on oxygen, the inhaulers the prednisone and so many other drugs just to help her breath a little bit better. My Mom died in my arms and thats what keeps coming back to me. Do I want to go like she did. No I don't because I have got a Husband, a Son and a Grand-Daughter that loves me very much and I want to stick around to be with them. That right there makes it all worth while. Good luck to evryone of you thats trying to quit. It's hard but we can all do it.

I quit for my son he was diagnosed with asthma I never ever smoked around him it's caused by allergies but the Dr said the smoke that came off of my clothes and hair was triggering it as well so I quit. I smoked my first cig when I was 9 started buying packs when I was 13, I quit one time before, and I'll be 39 in 3 wks. I made myself a promise to be fabulous by 40 and I'm gonna be if it kills me. You just need to find your motivation and just remind yourself every day. I always found I was more sucessful if I didn't set a date if I just woke up one day and said lemme see how far I can go with this Nov 12th will be 5 months for me. Next is chocolate the dreded beast.

First of all, like every other poster said, you have to want to quit it very badly - otherwise the chances that you will fail are getting high!

When you sort this out (think whether you want it out of your life once and for all, you hate it, it disgusts you etc) then there are a number of different ways to quit. just choose the one you think would work better for you. How to do that..? Well...do you know the phrase: "It's easy to quit smoking. I've done it many times". In other words, you'll have to be a very well-thought and strong person to quit it from the first time once and for all. But the usual is that you manage to quit it only to start again after a month or so. Then by experience (from the times you have quitted) you choose the next method and try to avoid what it made you start it again.

Now...here is what it eventually worked for me:

I "ticked" the first step: that is, I had decided that I just wanted to sit and have a coffee or a drink with others, without smoking and feeling normal without missing it. I had decided that I hated smoking.

Then, I tried cold turkey the first time. It worked for 2 months, then I started again (how could one cigarette after two months harm me? WRONG!)

Then, I tried to slow it down step by step, one cigarette less every day. It didn't work because it didn't have any difference for me to smoke 15 or 13 cigarettes...it took too long and you might as well forget all about it at some point and lose your motivation.

I tried again cold turkey, I quitted for 1 month, then started it again...it was holidays blah blah blah...just excuses.

Until the day that I just couldn't take it nomore. I chose a period that it suited me best to quit. Then I thought that I couldn't stand it one more time to quit cold turkey - too difficult, too much nerves and so on. So, what I did was to cut down from a packet of ciggies a day to 3 cigarettes a day. So that when you feel all this stress coming from the lack of nicotine, you then smoke one - then you feel a little bit better. then after some hours (it depends, different for different people) you start feeling you want a ciggie again, and you have to wait till the feeling becomes unbearable, then you smoke the second. and so on. So you still have to try but it is easier that way because you know that you are allowed 3 cigarettes a day to smoke when you start feeling youwant one. By this way you have simultaneously reduced from a packet (or so) to 3-4 cigarettes. I kept that 2 days, then reduced from 3 to 1 cigarett which I did for 3 days only, then I quitted. It's better if you don't stay many days with 1 cigarette. Just try to get done with it - otherwise there's a huge risk that you'll get back to it - get over with it now that you have the motivation. So, it's easier to accomodate yourself to the 3-2-1 cigarettes for a week/10 days and then it's easier to completely quit from 2 cigarettes to nothing rather than cold turkey (from a packet to nothing) and rather than reducing one by one from 30 cigarettes, that will take a month and you'll probably have lost your motivation till then.

After all this, you have to try and try and try to keep it to that. You have to remember how much you hate smoking and how much you want to be a non-smoker. Also, the most important at this time is "DO NOT TOUCH A CIGARETTE NO MATTER WHAT!!!!!!!" This is what I thought. After a month that I had quitted that time, I went for holidays in Greece with friends that are smokers and it was summer and we used to drink quit a lot every night!! I just thought that this is difficult, I get wasted every night, they all smoke, how am i gonna handle that?? but then I thought that no matter what, even if the world goes down, even if everyone dies or a meteorite falls on the earth, I will NOT smoke. And that's what it happened. After that challenge in Greece, everything else was easy.

It became even easier when most of my friends in the new country I am now, do not smoke. Now it's been 4 years since!! And I'm not terrified from the cigarettes either, I tried to smoke one last summer (in greece again) and it was awful like I had never smoked before. And I really regret that I did that, I had a sore throat for 3 weeks after that! Now I know that I won't ever again smoke, not even for fun - now i know that it'll make my throat sore for so long. and now i know that i don't want to get in to this hell again - the hell of bad health, the hell of wanting to quit, and the hell of quitting!

Well, that was it....I hope that my story and my advice will help a bit.

To sum up:
You have to really want it
You have to find the best way for you to quit
You must not touch the cigarette ever again!!! there is no point after all!